The first thing I did was try a few colours for the sashing deciding on
Kona Robin Egg; here are my ideas and thoughts:
I haven't done QAYG before, so I read some posts and watched some videos online and then I thought about it all for a day or so. I couldn't get to grips with how the blocks would actually be joined. It seemed that the batting would remain in separate pieces - it would be butted up to itself, but it wouldn't be physically joined. This worried me; in fact, it bothered me a lot, so I decided to ignore everything I'd read and seen and join the blocks together in my own way.
And here's how I did it:
I cut the 10 blocks to size and then zigzagged each row of blocks together - so 5 sets of 2. I didn't worry whether or not the zigzag caught the top and backing fabric. I knew this would all be enclosed in the sashing strips anyway - the objective here was purely to join all the batting and create a solid quilt from the 10 blocks.
 |
| a zigzagged top join |
 |
| Two zigzagged rows - you can see on the top left that the quilt top hasn't been caught into the zigzag stitch. |
Now I need to cover each of these short joining seams. I decided that there was so much stitching already visible on these blocks that an additional row of straight stitching wasn't going to 'spoil' the look of the finished quilt - also, I really wasn't up for hand stitching all these joining strips into place.
For the quilt back, I cut each strip 1.5" wide, folded it in half, pressed it, then opened it out and folded each outside edge in to touch the central pressed line and pressed again. The photo below shows a folded and pressed finished strip, and a narrow strip is sewn into place. The width of this strip, when pressed and finished, is 3/4". I then straight line machine-sewed both edges of this strip onto the
back of the quilt using a 1/8" border along the joined zigzag seam to cover the join. The two stitching lines showed through on the quilt top, but these would be covered on the top side by the broader strip that I added next.
For the quilt top, I cut 2" wide strips, which I again folded in half, pressed, opened, folded the edges into the central line and repressed. This gave me a finished 1" strip which I sewed along the zigzag seam on the top of the quilt to cover the join. As this strip was 1/4" wider than the backing strip, it covered the stitch lines easily. Again, I stitched 1/8" from both edges.
 |
| And that's how the finished top strip looks. |
Here's a look at the quilt back so you can see how the stitch lines show through from the front joining strip (one of the stitch lines is the straight line on the circle fabric just below the blue strip, and the other is totally lost in the stitching on the duck fabric):
I don't know about you, but I can live with those extra lines of straight stitching rather than doing lots of hand stitching on this quilt, and after all, this quilt is all about machine stitching.
Next, I zigzagged each row of 2 blocks to the next row.
Here are all the blocks zigzagged together - Quilt Top
and Quilt Back
At this stage, I realised that I hadn't needed to add the joining strips a row at a time using my method. I could much more easily have added one long joining strip to the back and then the top, and this would have ensured that the stripline ran much straighter down the length of the top and the back.
Since joining the blocks, I've been told by my friend Annette, who does a lot of QAYG quilting, that there is a QAYG method where you can add the joining strips from the back of each strip using a zigzag stitch that joins the blocks together securely and the machine stitching isn't visible from the front. This method sounds great, but I didn't come across it on the internet (if anyone knows where I can find a tutorial, please let me know) - all the methods I saw used straight stitch only.
By now, I'd also had enough of pressing the strips and remembered a tool that my quilt tutor, Christine Janove, had shown me a year or so ago,
Clover Bias Tape Makers. These great little tools make bias strips, which basically is what we are making to cover the joins on a QAYG quilt, and they are so straightforward and quick. I was straight down to my LQS and purchased a red 3/4" and yellow 1"
(NB: the measurement for each tool is the width of the finished bias tape it makes, not the original fabric strip width).
Here's how they work for anyone who hasn't seen these before. The remainder of the job was done in a couple of minutes.
 |
| Feed-in the fabric strip |
 |
| The fabric comes out at the other end perfectly folded in half with a central seam. |
 |
| Pull the handle on the tape maker to move it along the fabric and follow with a hot iron over the folded fabric pressing the folds into place. |
 |
| It takes seconds!!! | | |
|
|
|
|
So all that was left to do was add the horizontal seams, square up the quilt, and machine bind it, and here it is:
Not sure what I'm going to do with the quilt now - it's not a snuggly, cuddly quilt; two of the blocks are pretty thick, making them less flexible - Cathedral Window and the Folded blocks. It lends itself more to being a play mat or wall hanging; Flicky says it looked like a bath mat, and today when I had it rolled up to take out for the shoot, it looked rather like a beach mat. Maybe I should give it to Tatty; she seems pretty happy lying on it; what do you think?
I've had a complete blast taking part in
The Something NEW Sampler blog hop, I've learnt loads, made new friends, and it's been lots of fun. I'd like to say a huge thank you to
Amy,
Heidi,
Chelsea,
Jess,
Lindsay,
M-R,
Heidi,
Alyssa and
Becky for their excellent tutorials and an extra-special thank you to
Amy @the cute life for organising the Hop and
Flickr group.
Thanks, everyone :)
You can follow
The Something NEW Sampler on Flickr.
Featured On:
Clicking on an image will take you to a new page of crafty goodness :)
Disclosure:
This post contains Amazon and Craftsy affiliate links for which I am paid compensation on click-through purchases (at no additional cost to you). Otherwise, the post is for informational purposes only, and all opinions are my own.
Copyright:
No portion of this site may be reproduced in any format without written permission from the site owner, Chris Dodsley @made by ChrissieD.
Uncredited reproduction of all content, text and images on this site is prohibited.
Once written permission is granted, all content, text and images must be credited to Chris Dodsley @made by ChrissieD
and include a link back to the relevant page on this site.
